Tuesday, December 18, 2012

22 Stats That Prove That There Is Something Seriously Wrong With Young Men In America

When
are we finally going to admit that we have a very serious problem with
this generation of young men in America? We have failed them so
dramatically that it is hard to put it into words. We have raised an
entire generation of young males that don't know how to be men, and many
of them feel completely lost. Sometimes they feel so lost that they
"snap" in very destructive ways. Adam Lanza and James Holmes are two
names that come to mind. Why is it that mass murderers are almost
always young men? Why don't young women behave the same way? Sadly,
Adam Lanza and James Holmes are just the tip of the iceberg of a much
larger problem in our society. Our young women vastly outperform our
young men in almost every important statistical category. Young men are
much more likely to perform poorly in school, they are much more likely
to have disciplinary problems and they are much more likely to commit
suicide. In the old days, our young men would gather in the streets or
in the parks to play with one another after school, but today most of
them are content to spend countless hours feeding their addictions to
video games, movies and other forms of entertainment. When our young
men grow up, many of them are extremely averse to taking on
responsibility. They want to have lots of sex, but they aren't
interested in marriage. They enjoy the comforts of living at home, but
they don't want to go out and pursue career goals so that they can
provide those things for themselves. Our young men are supposed to be
"the leaders of tomorrow", but instead many of them are a major burden
on society. When are we finally going to admit that something has gone
horribly wrong?

There is even a name for this generation of young men that does not
want to grow up. It is called the "Peter Pan generation". They want to
enjoy the benefits of being grown up without ever taking on the
responsibilities. A member of this "Peter Pan generation" recent wrote
an article for the Daily Mail in which he discussed what he and his friends are going through...

I haven’t yet had to grow up so, well, I haven’t.Reckless, irresponsible and immature? Yes. But at least I can take comfort in the fact I am not alone.Last week, I read that there is even a name for people such as
me. We are the ‘Peter Pan generation’; a sizeable group of 25 to
40-year-olds who exist in a state of extended adolescence, avoiding the
trappings of responsibility — marriage, mortgage, children — for as long
as possible.‘Our society is full of lost boys and girls hanging out at the
edge of adulthood,’ says Professor Frank Furedi, a sociologist who has
been studying this phenomenon, at the University of Kent. ‘Another word sometimes used to describe these people is
“adultescent” — generally defined as someone who refuses to settle down
and make commitments, and who would rather go on partying into middle
age.’

Young men in America didn't always behave this way. Several decades
ago, men in America moved away from home, got married and had children
much earlier than they do now. But the young men of today seem to want
to put off the "markers of adulthood" for as long as possible. The
following is from an outstanding article by Sandy Hingston...

Sociologists cite five “markers” or “milestones” that
have traditionally defined our notion of adulthood: finishing school,
moving away from the parental home, becoming financially independent,
getting married, and having a child. In 1960, 65 percent of men had
ticked off all five by age 30; by 2000, only a third had. The experts
have plenty of explanations for what’s come to be called “extended
adolescence” or “emerging adulthood”—or what New York Times columnist
David Brooks calls the “Odyssey Years.” They blame helicopter parents,
the burden of student loan debt, much higher poverty rates among young
people (nearly half of all Americans ages 25 to 34 live below the
national level), and a dearth of vo-tech training and manufacturing
jobs. Almost 60 percent of parents are now giving money to their grown
kids—an average of $38,340 per child in the years between ages 18 and
34. Whatever happened to the son looking after his mom?

So why is all of this happening?

Well, there are a whole host of reasons. But certainly parents and
our education system have to bear much of the blame. In the old days,
young men were taught what it means to "be a man", and morality was
taught to young men both by their parents and in the schools. But
today, most young men have very little understanding of what "manhood"
is, and our society has taught them that morality doesn't really
matter. Instead, television and movies constantly portray young men as
sex-obsessed slackers that just want to party all the time, so that is
what many of our young men have become.

How much better off would our society be if we had trained this
generation of young men to love, honor, protect and take care of others?

How much better off would our society be if we had nurtured the
manhood of our young men instead of teaching them to be ashamed of it?

How much better off would our society be if we had disciplined our
young men and taught them morality when they were getting off track
instead of just letting them do whatever they wanted?

The following are 22 stats that prove that there is something seriously wrong with young men in America today...#1 Males account for approximately 70 percent of all Ds and Fs in U.S. public schools.

#2 About two-thirds of all students in "special education programs" are boys.

#3 The average American girl spends 5 hours a week playing video games. The average American boy spends 13 hours a week playing video games.

#4 The average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21.

#5 One study discovered that 88 percent
of all Americans between the ages of 8 and 18 play video games, and
that video game addiction is approximately four times as common among
boys as it is among girls.

#6 At this point, 15-year-olds that attend U.S. public schools do not even rank in the top half of all industrialized nations when it comes to math or science literacy.

#7 In 2011, SAT scores for young men were the worst that they had been in 40 years.

#8 According to a survey conducted by the National Geographic Society, only 37 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can find the nation of Iraq on a map.

#9 According to the New York Times, approximately 57 percent of all young people enrolled at U.S. colleges are women.

#10 It is being projected that women will earn 60 percent of all Bachelor's degrees from U.S. universities by the year 2016.

#11 Even if they do graduate from college, most of our young men still can't find a decent job. An astounding 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor's degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed during 2011.

#12 Pornography addiction is a major problem among our young men. An astounding 30 percent of all Internet traffic now goes to pornography websites, and one survey found that 25 percent of all employees that have Internet access in the United States even visit sex websites while they are at work.

#13 In the United States today, 47 percent of all high school students have had sex.

#14 The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate on the entire planet. If our young men behaved differently this would not be happening.

#15 In the United States today, one out of every four
teen girls has at least one sexually transmitted disease. If our young
men were not sex-obsessed idiots running around constantly looking to
"score" these diseases would not be spreading like this.

#16 Right now, approximately 53 percent of all Americans in the 18 to 24 year old age bracket are living at home with their parents.